


Separate Worlds

by Shanaqui (edenbound)



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-23
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 13:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenbound/pseuds/Shanaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rinoa doesn't expect anyone else to understand the way things work between her, Seifer and Squall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Separate Worlds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tinamachina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinamachina/gifts).



> Written for this prompt: "(28) FFVIII; Seifer/Squall; slash; they allow Rinoa to watch." Not quite, perhaps, what the prompter was expecting, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

They kept it from her, at first. Of course they did. Squall might not have thought of it -- he's still stupid about people, however much progress he's made -- but Seifer did, because he's not as much of an asshole as he likes to pretend. Still, the bond between them has always been _obvious_ (and no matter what anyone says, Rinoa has never thought she could break it), and the two of them make themselves blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes. It's something in the body language, the very slight tip of Squall's mouth that's almost a smile when Seifer shoves past him in a hallway, the flash of their eyes meeting.

They thought it would hurt her, but Rinoa is _glad_. She's never been stupid, not really, but she has been so naive it almost made no difference, and she'd once been naive enough to think she could fill in the gaps for one or the other of them. She soon figured out that she couldn't, and even if she could, she wouldn't -- it only really became obvious when Seifer came back to Garden, but she knew from the start that she was trying to fill the space meant for someone else.

Selphie gives her pitying looks, squeezes her hand sympathetically, because the long and the short of it is that everyone thinks she was in love with Squall, or Seifer, or both. Everyone knows that they've really only got room in their worlds for each other. Everyone knows that there's no place for Rinoa there.

But Rinoa knows things they don't: knows that Seifer likes a witness to the way he can make Squall breathless with a kiss; knows Squall doesn't mind (which for him, is tantamount to liking) someone watching the poetry of them in motion, fighting; knows that they have space for a witness; knows that witnessing it is enough for her. She doesn't expect it to make sense to anyone else.


End file.
